From the author of Twitter For Authors: Social Media Book Marketing Strategies for Shy Writers come 10 tips to help you get on the Twitter train.

I know Twitter can be a confusing medium for many authors – what can you say in 140 characters or less to promote your book? In my opinion, Twitter is actually a writer’s dream for those who like to write short, like the absence of a lot of images, and are willing to experiment.

A news service that the users create, Twitter is a great resource to meet other writers, agents, editors, and book bloggers, people who love to read and review books.

10 Tips on Promoting Your Book on Twitter

Open an account on Twitter. Choose a name that is easily recognizable, ideally your author name. In the long run, as an author, you are your brand. If you choose a name like “jamie123”

Bring in your email contacts. Twitter makes this easy. In this way, you can see who you already know on Twitter.

Craft a profile that tells us 1) you’re an author and what genre you write (romance, how-to, memoir, etc.); 2) your interests that reflects your personality; and 3) what can entice us to want to get to know you better. There is a separate field for your website or blog site, so don’t put that in your Twitter profile.

Draft tweets ahead of time because you’d rather be writing, right? Use a service like Hootsuite.com, BufferApp.com, SocialOomph.com, or Tweetdeck — all with free versions — to schedule tweets ahead of time. You can also use these tools to reply to people, and follow conversations. More on Twitter conversations below.

Spend most of your time interacting directly and publicly with people who follow you, retweet (RT) you, and “favorite” your tweets. You do this by using the @ Connect tab on the Twitter menu. I spend 90% of my time here.

Interact in conversations that relate to your book. You do this by clicking on the “# Discover” tab. This is where you can type in a keyword with or without the # sign, or hashtag. Authors often ask me how to use the hashtag. By typing in your keyword with a hashtag, like “#amwriting” — a hashtag used to connect with others writers who are writing — you can stay in touch and be a part of a larger conversation happening around the virtual water cooler.

Use the 5-5-5 rule to keep your time focused and limited: Spend 5 minutes responding to tweets, follows, and replies. Spend a second 5 minutes following new people. Twitter offers suggestions all the time on the left-hand side. You can also use the “# Discover” tab. Use the final 5 minutes crafting tweets, thanking, sharing, and inviting.

Take risks. Sometimes we don’t know what will work until we try it. There’s lots of room for experiment and play. As long as you are in line with what you stand for (your platform, really), then what you do on Twitter (and by extension the other social media channels), you can feel good about your actions.

Learn from the masters or the more experienced authors. When I see a book marketing campaign done by another author that I think is really cool, I try it — with my own spin, of course.

Participate in conversations. There is a plethora of hashtags that writers are using to connect, promote, and learn. As I mentioned above, there’s #amwriting. There’s also #amediting. If you’d like to participate in a live conversation, the tool to use is Tweetchat, a free service, at http://tweetchat.com/.

Two other very popular hashtags are #FF or #FollowFriday, and #WW or #WriterWednesday. If you type these in the Search box, you’ll see lots of writers using these. The primary purpose of both of these is to give a shout out to your followers (#FF) and to your friends and colleagues (#WW)

Due to scant historical evidence, very little is known about Mary’s early life before her marriage to Joseph and the birth of Jesus. Nickum (The Path, 2014, etc.) attempts to creatively fill in these blanks, envisioning what Mary’s early upbringing might have been like. Here, Mary is raised as an only child because her older sister, Salome, was kidnapped by Samaritan rebels, never to be seen again. Later, Mary is also abducted by a mysterious woman and held in captivity for weeks before her eventual rescue. At an early age, she demonstrates a natural curiosity and defiance, refusing to leave home to become a Temple Virgin. She candidly challenges traditions and customs that often seem designed to restrict women’s freedom. Mary’s parents decide she’s ready for marriage at the age of 12, and despite her attraction for a boy relatively close to her age, they choose Joseph, a much older man. Mary is horrified and vehemently expresses her consternation, almost ruining the arrangement, which turns out to be financially beneficial to her family. Mary becomes pregnant only two months after her wedding—so soon that Joseph suspects that he might not be the father. When a Roman visits Mary’s house on business and issues a prediction, it later looks like prophecy: “You will have a son who will change the world.” The book’s story begins prior to Mary’s birth and astutely depicts the political context into which she was born. Galilee was under the brutal rule of Herod, who was only notionally a Jew and expressed his pro-Roman leanings in his fawning adoration of Caesar. Mary’s father, Joachim, was part of a perilous rebellion meant to replace Herod with a less tyrannical, more genuinely Jewish leader. Much of the value of the author’s dramatization is precisely in vividly bringing to life this political and cultural context. Nickum’s interpretation certainly departs from the biblical account—specifically, the story as it’s told in the Gospel of Luke—and Mary conceives Jesus naturally, not immaculately. This particular revision has significant theological implications and seems like an omission that’s never directly addressed. However, the story is still engaging as historical hypothesis and successfully adds layers of depth and complexity to a figure whose formative years remain obscure.